


Fragment

by ignipes



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-16
Updated: 2005-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-02 21:27:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that [he] had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.</p><p>-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragment

Going mad is easy. Easiest thing in the world. There's a mind, now it's gone. Now you see it, now you don't. A journey on a nice smooth road, a road that slopes down, down, down. That's why they call it _going_. That's why they call it _falling_.

He thinks about falling. There's the window, there's the sea, there's the rocks in the surf far below. It occurred to him years ago, or maybe last month. Even in the fortress, the moon waxes and wanes. She grows bold in the very stones themselves, a bright leering face, turning the sea silver in her jealousy. If he stretches, reaches, digs his fingers and toes into the seams in the stone until the skin is scraped raw and his nails are torn away, he can see the moon, her cold face, her cold sea, and he knows another month has passed.

Somewhere, somewhere far away, somebody is screaming. The moon makes light makes cold makes screams. That's an equation he derived a long time ago, one of many. Balance. Equal and opposite. Ephemeris. The moon stills waxes and wanes, the stars still whirl about the pole, duck under the horizon, emerge again. Equations scratched on parchment. Equations traced with whisper fingers on warm, soft skin. Written in sand, in clouds, in blood, in smoke and wreckage and the smell of charred flesh and crushed spectacles and a baby's wail--

He presses his hands to his eyes, moves them away, looks at them carefully. Right palm, left palm. Jagged nails. Lifeline, loveline. Long fingers tracing the lines, warm breath murmuring the future, winter-chapped lips touching the wrist. He knows that his hands remember more than he does, and he thinks it's better that way. Filthy fingernails, black with grime from the window. They know he climbs to see out, they know he's thought about falling. Wash every three days. Cold bucket of water, coarse soap, a rag that might have been a towel, once, in another life. They eat twice a day. Thin porridge. New blanket once a month. Chamber pot emptied once a day -- usually. Inspection once a year. On your best behavior or you'll be in the _dark_. You know what we mean. _Dark_.

He always behaves. He's been in the dark, once. He spent days -- weeks -- months -- grasping at ghosts, at wisps of thought, at memories. They slipped through his fingers. Every smile, every sly wink, every laugh, every sigh. They slipped through his fingers, every one. He stopped grasping. It was easier that way.

Going mad is easy. Easiest thing in the world. Sanity is warmth and comfort and strong arms around him and mates in a pub and tripping over baby toys and flying and crimson curtains and hushed apologies and Sunday mornings and hot tea. None of that, here. Stone, only stone, nothing but stone. Climb to the window, watch the sea, try to fall. Just let his thoughts tumble, let them crash, let the moon sneer at him with her cold, cold face. That's all. Let it slip away.

It's easier than remembering.

Make a fist, hide the lines, touch the stone. Always the stone.

Easier than remembering. It should be.


End file.
